Nope, I’m not. The ruling elite have chosen to do a lot of things that have had horribly negative repercussions on the general populace. They are responsible for those atrocities. However, saying “oo, how mean the Norks are to keep their people in the dark at night!” is disingenuous when it’s our sanctions that have a lot to do with lack of fuel in that nation.
Well, I left a lot out because I am writing posts on a message board rather than a treatise on North Korea. As you point out, if you read that post in context with my others in this thread a lot of the “left out” stuff is actually very much there.
It’s been my observation that some humanitarian aid is always diverted. In the case of North Korea they made very clear both to their own people and the outside world that they would feed the army first. Why was anyone surprised when they did exactly that?
Part of the problem (as I see it) is that the outside world keeps doubting the North Koreans mean what they say. They’re actually pretty blunt and direct on some issues. The only way to get humanitarian aid to the civilians of North Korea is to provide enough that there is a surplus over what the army needs. Keep that in mind the next time someone proposes sending food or fuel or medicine there.
China has an incentive to go around the sanctions because if North Korea implodes or falls THEY are the ones who will be facing millions of refugees coming over the Tumen and Amnok rivers into their territory. China has a significant incentive to do something to prevent that, including doing an end run around sanctions that might result in millions of starving people invading their nation. I can’t really fault them for acting in their own self interest.
Again – the North Koreans have made it abundantly clear since the fall of the Soviet Union that their military comes first. They’re have been extremely plain spoken about this, and have even directly communicated this to the populace. The military eats first in that nation. There has been no subterfuge, no lying, no equivocation. The only reason anyone has even been surprised by that is because they somehow doubted the government meant what they said. Well, it turns out they didn’t, they really meant “the military eats first”. The military also gets fuel first, medicine first, everything first. We don’t happen to think that’s the way to do things but they do. That is how that nation is run. I think the governments of the world understand that better than the average person does, which is why there has been such restraint when North Korea bombs islands or sinks ships. At a certain point it’s not just bluster and propaganda anymore, they really do mean what they say.
The form those sanctions take, however, is on us. We should also acknowledge that we are backing North Korea into a corner. The rest of the world assumes that eventually they’ll back down and submit, but what if they don’t?
No, strictly speaking the famines were not their fault. There really were natural disasters that triggered those food shortages. How the famines were dealt with, yes, that’s their responsibility but they had some bad years due to circumstances beyond their control.
First, in the early 1990’s the collapse of the Soviet union resulted in a sharp reduction in aid, and also forced the North Koreans to pay true market prices for things like fertilizer, which sharply impacted their agricultural output. China tried to fill the gap by providing food at reduced prices, as well as fuel and fertilizer, but when 1993 rolled around China fell short in its own grain production, and also needed more hard currency of their own, and felt forced to cut aid to North Korea. That was bad enough, and did lead to food shortages, but not actual full out famine. THEN, in 1995, North Korea suffered massive flooding between July and August that wiped out much of that year’s production prior as well as an estimated 1.5 millions tons of grain stored underground that was destroyed by flood waters.
North Korea had no control over the collapse of the Soviet Union, the agricultural problems of their largest supporter (China), nor were they responsible for natural disaster in the form of the worst flooding seen in at least 70 years. They had grain reserves, but much of them were destroyed by natural disaster. Eventually, they did go to the rest of the world for aid, including their long-time nemesis the United States (food shipments with the US flag were explained as “tribute” to the civilian populace).
Yes, they were jackholes about a lot of things but the famines were not something they engineered. They did learn something, however. When flooding occurred again in the summer of 2007, killing thousands outright and wiping out 20% of the rice and 15% of the corn fields, North Korea immediately asked for aid from the outside world instead of waiting as it had in the 1990’s. Of course, they made no acknowledgement of outside aid, that’s not how they work, but it does seem that the ruling powers do want to keep the people fed at least at subsistence levels. Their swift action in 2007 prevented another famine such as seen in the 1990’s.
By what right do we dictate how another country is ruled? The sanctions have not been imposed because of how North Korea treats its own, it’s because of how North Korea treats everyone else. If all they did was abuse their own people they’d be ignored, just as so many other dictatorships have been largely ignored as long as they didn’t threaten anyone beyond their borders. The latest round of sanctions weren’t imposed because there are 200,000 people in labor camps being slowly worked and starved to death, they were imposed because North Korea tested another nuke and is test-firing missiles.